Honestly, dude, the way Bode skis his performance was expected. The only reason it wasn't was because of the way the media hyped him/covered him pre-olympics.

He's always fallen in a lot of races, it's inevitable when you ski like he does (his technique is.. unique, but I'm not going to waste my time explaining the subtleties of it to someone who knows nothing about/cares nothing for snow sports). BTW, he won a world cup event a few weeks after the olympics, but nevermind that.. he obviously doesn't know what he's doing (/sarcasm).

Ok, all you need is an orange peel, a spoon, a rock, and a standard contact lense (any prescription will work).

Smash toe orange peel into a paste with the rock, and coat the contact lense with the gooey residue. Next, wrench open your hard drive casing with the spoon, and focus the suns light with the coated contact lense. Rewrite your data as necessary.

Really? So, you believe that physics is an overly fragile structure? Or chemistry? Or mathematics? Those are all systems governed by an ideal order.

These are just constructs of the human mind, and would never exist in this way were humans not in conflict with everything around them. If all of humanity were to be in agreement, these ideas, and really all other ideas, would have stagnated long ago, with no maverics to promote outlandish ideas (quantum physics, relativity, etc). However, in your ideal universe humans have already perfected these ideas (somehow) so I'll drop that point.

If anything, a single, united humanity would be far more capable of averting problems, as everyone would know everything.

But that's totally impossible, even as an ideal! There always will be a sphere of information beyond our perceived universe. A vast unknown out beyond the visible light barrier! Paranoids and crazies would protect us/explore this region, but a complacent oneness would compute the probabilities and decide that there was nothing to be done.

The bottom line is, to me, that the universe is far too unpredictable (look at quantum theory, doesn't that suggest an unfathomable randomness to the universe?) for a single entity to survive. Inidividuality provides security by fighting the chaos with more chaos, a single being would inevitably succumb to the entropy that surrounded it.

Order and efficiency promote survival. An entity that is at conflict with itself is less likely to survive than an entity that is not. It really all comes down to survival. It is the end to which all means inevitably reach. Order is the best way to ensure survival.

For one, why has this even came up? Humanity is so far past worrying about extinction due to competition that survival in the traditional sense is no longer of any concern.

For another, without change an entity will inevitably stagnate and will cease to evolve.

Furthmore, conflict is one of the few things which keep life interesting! Your ideal of a perfectly ordered single being would be so oppressively boring that it would reduce life to non-life. If you reduce living organisms to these two dimensional ideal things you've essentially created rocks! Even the illusion of free will is dispelled, with each decision being absolute based on the knowledge at that present time.

I'm hardly some lovey-dovey irrationalist, but reducing life to some sort of game in which the only goal is survival is boring and, IMHO, makes life totally unworth living! Honestly, at some point the earth/our solar system/this galaxy/the universe will end, and you will have lost the game which you've put every ounce of your efforts into.

Remember, I'm not saying that the ideal order is the optimal way to live (in terms of enjoyment, at least). I'm just saying that it is the only way to achieve ultimate order.

There's no such thing as an ideal "order"! An order is arbitrary or, at best, created to fulfill a particular goal. By simply distilling all of humanity to a single super being you're not creating any more order than if you created a billion equally great, equally rational, but sitll totally unique individuals (uniqueness would result due to differences in their experiences, perceptions, etc).

If anything your ideal would result in an overly fragile structure, incapable of surviving a catastrophe or otherwise unforeseen problem due to its oneness.

In order to achieve this, of course, humans would have to change at a fundamental level.

Which would mean they were no longer human, no?

(Half-baked sci-fi hive mind ideal) [...] is the ideal order.

Surely you realize that your idea is just your ideal, and that idealistic visions of complete free will and atonomy are just as legitimate? I really don't see how removing all sense of the individual is what humanity should be working for. Honestly, I think it would be greater if each individual had the level of opportunity available to most Americans, free to live their lives in a uniuqe manner and accomplish things based on their unique strengths.

If anything the moderating effects of society should be reduced. Removing the pressure kid's feel to be "normal" would create fewer watch-6-hours-of-TV-a-night drones and result in innovations and ideas that only an active human brain is capable of.

I know the odds are (astronomically) against this, but I hope that golf ball breaks some alien's windshield and kills the crew. Seems like it would be an awesome way to officially announce our presence to that race.... They'd be so confused!

For one, the dimples serve no purpose in the vacuum, so that ball is going to be confusing in and of itself. Furthermore, trying to explain the sport of golf will be ridiculous. And the capper: golf in space is even more ridiculous than normal golf.

I dunno.. I guess I just wish life had more inter-spatial(?? dimensional? galaxial?) intrigue and/or friction.

Apparently Sly Stone made an appearance at the Grammys, anyone know where I can find video of this? The Grammy's website has nothing but pictures/movies focussing on the "fashion" of the event, which seems ludicrous considering the intended focus of the event/awards...